BYU Police Under Investigation by the State for Accessing External Police Records

After BYU Police accessed over 2,000 police records from the Provo Police Department over a year and a half period, the state Department of Public Safety's Bureau of Investigation began looking into the frequency with which BYU Police have accessed these records and why.

Sanctions or even criminal charges may be levied against Brigham Young University's University Police by the Utah County Attorney's Office or local law enforcement agencies after it was discovered the department accessed thousands of documents from local police over an 18-month period.

According to records obtained through a public information request by the Daily Herald, the BYU University Police used the county records management system, known as Spillman, more than 2,300 times in the past 18 months to access or interact with Provo Police Department records and Utah County Sheriff’s Office records. The pattern of records access concerned the two agencies, and a state investigation into the BYU University Police's actions was opened in May and announced in June.

The information received from the Daily Herald's request does not detail who queried the systems or what information was accessed.

“We use Spillman to safeguard those records,” said Sgt. Brian Taylor, spokesman for the Provo Police Department. “There are legitimate uses by other agencies for those, but it’s hard for us to understand why a neighboring agency would need thousands of our records.”